Bad Ideas

Well, I've been a little quiet lately. I'm laying low because I've been a wee bit indisposed.

It all started so innocently. I got this cold. A little tiny cold. The wimpiest cold ever. No big. But then, I made a mistake. A Very Bad Mistake.

See, I posted on FaceBook that I had the wimpiest cold ever. In effect, I laughed at it. I gave it a virtual raspberry. I might as well have waved my metaphorical private parts at its aunties (silly English ka-nnnigit... with apologies to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) Ultimately, it boils down to this: I taunted the virus.

Never taunt the virus.

Thing is, if you taunt the virus, it goes, "Oh, yeah?" and then it calls in reinforcements in the form of a secondary bacterial bronchopneumonia. And having pneumonia of any form, let me tell you, is a Bad Idea.

It's not my first round with pneumonia. I had it when I was an intern. I worked every day for a month with it. This also: Bad Idea. However, I was in a seven-intern program and we'd already lost two: One had broken her leg whilst cowboy dancing (no one could say she wasn't enthusiastic) and the other had wrecked her motorcycle. Five interns can (with great difficulty) do seven interns' work. Four interns can't. I knew if I went down the whole house of cards was going down with me. I wasn't going to do that to my intern mates. So, I lay on my side at night, feeling the secretions rolling down my airways, and then I coughed and coughed until I cleared them out. Then I rolled to my other side and did it again. I started on antibiotics and I got up in the mornings and I went to work. I also developed an interesting drug eruption as a result of an allergy to the antibiotic, but that's another story. But I got through it, my injured intern mates recovered and returned to work (one of them in a wheelchair at first), and I gradually got better. The intern program returned to full strength (for a while, anyway, until one of the interns left to give birth slightly prematurely - some people will do ANYthing to get out of their intern presentation! - and another had to leave the program for personal reasons.)

However, the entire experience left an indelible impression on me. Coughing your brains out for a month will do that to you. Go figure.

Which is how I knew, four days after the wimpy cold had started, that I was heading into Big Trouble. One day I was fine - mild sore throat, no cough, a little stuffy, a little blah. The next day I started coughing. Still no big, not much coughing. Par for the course. The next day, like a fool, I posted the wimpy cold status on FB.

Day after that, coughing a little heavier. By that night, it was kicking my ass. But I was off the next day; I figured I'd sleep it off. Still no big. Except that by the evening of the following day I Could. Not. Breathe.

If I concentrated hard I could draw a full breath, but I was drawing it against resistance, and it took effort to exhale. This - slow, deep respirations with effort - is an obstructive pattern, which indicates airway narrowing. A rapid, shallow pattern would indicate restriction, such as would occur with air or fluid inside the chest, anything compressing the lung tissue. But I couldn't tolerate any compression of my chest - not leaning back against the pillow, not laying down - and I had to concentrate on every breath. I didn't need a stethoscope to hear the crackles and rales in my chest. I could hear them just fine without (and feel them even better).

Okey-dokey. Time for a pulse-ox, and I may be heading to the people hospital to admit myself.

I struggled into clothes and tottered down to my truck. It was cold and the wind was absolutely howling - gusts into the 70 mph range. I warmed my truck up for 10 minutes - it took that length of time to recover from the trip down there, anyway - and I drove to work, concentrating on driving, concentrating on fighting the heavy winds as they snatched at my truck and bounced it around, concentrating on breathing. I made it to the clinic, went inside and leaned on a table for a while til I could breathe again. I put the pulse oximeter on my finger. I waited for it to pick up my heart rate - 120, too high - and my oxygenation - 90, too low. On room air I should be 98 to 100%, and standing at rest my heart rate ought to be in the high 80 to low 90 range.

This means that my lungs are impaired, but not as much as my bronchioles. My oxygenation is down about ten percent, but that's better than my respiratory effort, which is up by a factor of two or three above normal. I've never had this much effort breathing - ever in life - and that's for just standing there, doing nothing. Still, 90 isn't good - but it isn't dying, either.

Okay then. No hospitalization. On the other hand, big Yes to getting some meds (and yes, I do have a people doctor, why do you ask?)

So I started on antibiotics. I'm a proponent or reserving the use of antibiotics for those situations that merit them, which means I never take them for a cold. Especially not for a wimpy cold. But if said wimp-cold calls in a nice bacterial backup - okay, then. AB's it is.

Two hours later I felt markedly improved. Pulse ox had climbed to 92 (okay, not great, but I was getting it without the extreme effort.) I went home. I laid down. I slept. A miracle has occurred, and I can do both now. Or maybe it's not so much a miracle as the glory of antibiotics, appropriately applied, and thank God I live in a time and place where these things are available.

Meanwhile I got my truck stuck at the bottom of my driveway. The screaming winds have blown away the sand on my drive and polished the ice to something that even my Yak Trax are slipping on. It was a struggle to make it up the hill in the howling winds and the dark, but fortunately for Christmas (thanks, Dad) I got a headlamp that I believe might be visible in Russia. This means I could see even the slightest patch of traction, so I managed it in a under ten minutes, and only had to stop for breath every twenty feet or so. Easy-peasy. Fortunately I'd taken one Border collie along for moral support (I wanted two, but couldn't manage both), and he kept running back to check on me, facing into the knife-blade of the wind to watch me with quizzical gravity, moving up the drive when I did, as if concerned I'd forgotten the way. Every time I stopped, he'd run back down to me, watch, wait, lead me again.

Getting inside the house was lovely.

I slept and coughed the next day. I drank water and ate antibiotics and felt better. The following day I took a sick day and did it again. I called Rock Ridge and asked them if they had any miracle solutions for my driveway. They did, they assured me, and if I needed anything - food, medications, help of any description - I was to call them for rescue.

Gotta love Alaskans.

The next day I had challenges to face. Challenge number one was getting out of bed. That managed, I faced the Big One: making it down the drive to my truck, preferably without falling and breaking anything important. I put on my Yak Trax and crept out onto the icy drive, into the face of the howling winds. In the main, there are trees to grab onto - well, saplings, at least - and maybe a tiny rim of traction right at the very edge of the drive. Most of it I managed to do completely upright. Part of it I did literally on my hands and knees, where it was too slick and steep for the Yak Trax to grip the ice. The bank beside the driveway is devoid of both snow and ice, but the dirt is frozen so hard that there is no traction on it; my boots just slip off. I solved this by toeing in hard to the bank, bracing my knees against the steep slope of it, and using my frozen hands to find meager hand-holds of equally-frozen knobs of dirt knurling the surface. I crab-walked down that part sideways on my knees, but soon the bank's slope levels out and there is real footing again. Ah, success: My truck is there, the door is open, the dog and I are inside. My hands ache with cold and I can't feel my fingers, but steps one and two are complete.

Challenge number next: starting the truck, which has not had its block heater plugged in in three days. It is three degrees at my house - and, most unusually when it's that cold, the wind is still screaming by at vicious speed. The wind-chill is brutal. This might be a problem. But no, the truck fires right up.

Okay, now all I have to do is ease it out of the driveway without sliding into the lake, and then do my solo day at work. Piece of cake. Well, maybe not a piece of cake, but at least manageable. After getting down the hill, the rest of the challenges combined seem reasonably undaunting. My staff hunts around and finds me cough drops. They help me wrestle the tough dogs. They volunteer to slap me helpfully on the back if I need help coughing. We treat everything that comes in the door successfully.

Time to go home. Parked in the teeth of the wind for almost eight hours, the truck is dreadfully cold and won't start. It floods, straining to kick the engine over. Crap. I regroup, press the gas pedal to the floor, coax, pray. She tries, fails. Tires again, fails. Then a little gift: She turns over for me now, gargling and choking, but fighting through it to roar into life. Bless you, my little Canyon. I love this truck. I know Rock Ridge would come rescue me if need be - and so would any number of others - but I want to go home, crawl under the down comforter surrounded by dogs, watch Phantom of the Opera again (love that score), sleep. And that's what I do, because Rock Ridge has made my driveway navigable again, and the truck climbs right up.

Today I am better, and continuing on. It'll be a bit before I'm back to normal - once things settle into my chest, they stay a while - but I'm on the mend. But this is why I haven't posted the Bison story I promised Jenny - or anything else, for that matter. I'll get to it, eventually. I promise.

Meanwhile, on the plus side, I'm up to 94% oxygenation (heart rate mercifully 89 now). As a handy bonus, I think that all the coughing must be an excellent abdominal exercise, since my stomach muscles are sore, sore, sore. (Somehow, however, I doubt that the Bronchopneumonia Ab Workout will catch on and make me a million dollars.) I can think, I can breathe, and while I still have a lot of coughing in my future, I am now on the up-slope.

Also, I've learned an important lesson: Never taunt the virus.

The Weather Wild

Okay, I actually do know that this is Alaska and I should expect weather extremes. That doesn't keep me from remarking on it from time to time; even we (who are used to it) find it dramatic at times.

This is a la nina year, which I was cheerfully told by a client would mean a colder-than-usual winter. I immediately cursed him roundly and then threatened him with bodily harm if he was right, but strangely, that has not changed things for me. It HAS been colder than usual, and that's not the extent of it.

For one thing, the weather predictors seem to have taken la nina as licence to lie to us more than usual. Okay, I know they aren't really lying; they're guessing. But they'll blithely promise us a 10-degree jump in temperature, with clouds and snow, and what we get is crystal clear skies and a 5 degree DROP in temperature. It's hard not to be annoyed by that, especially if your starting point is subzero.

For another thing, we had some wicked strong winds this winter. It started when I was at work one day; the temperature had come up, according to the thermometer at the clinic. However, the wind came up along with it, dropping the effective temperature. By evening, when I was getting ready to leave work, it was a challenge to open the back door at the clinic, and should you be so foolish to be coming in that door, you had to watch carefully that the wind didn't slam the door on your ankle hard enough to break it.

Well. THAT'S fun.

Even more fun was the fact that we'd had a recent snow, and all of it was now blowing southwest at a high rate of speed. There is, of course, the bright side: just walking to the truck, I got free dermabrasion from tiny sand-like grains of ice and road grit.

Mmmm. That's refreshing.

Moreover, once you stagger blindly across the parking lot and find your truck (mainly by feel, since you can't really open your eyes wider than miserly slits), you get to try to open the truck door. Since the truck is parked nose-on into the wind, this will require at least three tries, since on the first two the wind will snatch the door out of your rapidly-numbing hands and slam it shut again. The windshield will be hazy with airborne grit, but the truck will start faithfully.

Now comes the entertaining drive home. There will be a ground blizzard of epic proportions. This is disorienting to drive in for several reasons: First, you can't see the road itself, nor any lane lines or other markings. This is in part because it's dark out, and in part because the curtain of blowing snow is inches thick and not punctuated by much in the way of lulls or gaps. Second, as you squint at the river of snow flowing across the road, your eye wants to follow the motion, which makes it challenging not to let your wheel go with it. This effect is enhanced by the fact that the snow isn't crossing the road perpendicularly, but at something of an angle, making it harder to sort out visually where you are supposed to be aiming your vehicle. And last but not least, you're fighting the buffeting of the gale the entire time, trying to steer a straight course against the blustering tug of the wind on your rig, and through the shifting veil of snow concealing the road from your eye.

Eventually, however, you will arrive home, only to discover that, while the winds are lower at home, the ambient temp is also lower, which makes your truck sad. On the plus side, there's little drifting to contend with, and the winds are forecast to die down overnight.

As it turns out, those weather people lied about that. AGAIN.

In the morning the winds have picked up. Luckily it's a day off, so I can wait til daylight to go out and fight my way back into town (which I might not do if not for the fact that I have to return our on-call cell phone to the clinic). I warm up the truck, back down my hill, sashay my truck forward through the lightly-drifted part of my lower driveway, and pause to check for traffic before I pull out.

Oh, goodie. There are huge drifts across the road now. Yay. Not.

Sighing, I check that the hubs are locked and I pull out, gunning it to ramming speed. I break through the first drift, fishtailing in the deeper snow. Ten feet farther on I hit the second, and largest, drift. The truck shudders, hesitates, bogging down in the snow. The tires are struggling for purchase on the road, but the snow is too deep to allow it. But she's a good little truck and she digs in, slewing and yawing, and powers her way through. After that the last drift is a piece of cake, and we are on our way.

The wind is still grabbing at the truck, bullying it toward the shoulder. I keep two hands on the wheel and fight back. Luckily, the majority of snow available to blow has already blown wherever it's going to, and the visibility is decent. Not as luckily, there's still plenty of road grit.

Overhead, ravens are flying, as if nothing unusual is happening. Crazy Alaskan ravens.

On the way to work, I see a pickup bed topper turtled up in the ditch. Hmm. That's interesting. The wind tore a topper right off a truck, it seems. Even more interesting, further on, there is an entire camper - the kind that fits in a truck bed, with a sleeping compartment that rests on top of the cab - is sitting next to an intersection. It is upright, as if Dorothy's tornado came and plucked it off a truck and set it down complete, right next to the light post. Maybe we're not in Kansas anymore.

I looked to see if there were ruby slippers poking out from underneath, but I didn't see any.

I did, however, see a large piece of panelling flapping heavily against the storefront from which it has been half-torn free, and two street signs whose poles have been bent far enough over that the sign is swaying at knee-height in the verge of the road.

Last but not least, I see an entire 18-wheeler on its side in the ditch. It looks like this happened some hours ago - the site is abandoned, no Troopers or rescue personnel nearby - and the trailer is twisted at an awkward angle to the cab. I hope nobody was hurt.

Eventually I make the clinic, where the wind snatches my door open and tries (but fails) to rip it off its hinges. I stagger across wind-polished ice to the clinic, make it inside without having my ankle bear-trapped in the door, return the cell and catch my breath for a few minutes before braving the wind again.

Repeat for two more days.

Oh, well. It made a break from the cold, anyway. Unfortunately the cold returned thereafter, defying all predictions from the weather guessers that it was going to warm up tomorrow, warm up TOMORROW, I say, HEY! WARM UP!

No? Okay then. Who can I bribe?

I can't complain today. It came up 16 degrees overnight (to a balmy 12 degrees), and it is snowing: Big, light, fluffy crystalline flakes, beautiful to behold. On the road, not as beautiful, because it's snowing to white-out conditions and accumulating fast enough to glaze the roads. Luckily the snow plows are out plowing and sanding, and closer in to town, away from the influence of the Cook Inlet, the snow is lighter and not sticking. And now, drinking tea at the coffee shop and blogging, the sun is shining slantwise below the cloud cover and turning the thinning flakes to diamonds floating on the air. Rifts of blue are showing through the clouds - which is pretty, but probably means the temp will drop again.

Still and all, the light is coming back, which up here is the harbinger of winter's end. The brain defect I have - which calls the end of winter earlier and earlier every year - is fully operational, asserting to me that winter is practically over, all we have to do is January and then it's done, it's only a month more to go, and it could be worse: it could be raining.

Oh. Um... I didn't just curse myself, did I...?

In Regatta Da Vida, Baby

So today was one of those days where I'm amazed I was even slightly coherent; it was howling gusty winds all night, screaming across my lake and roaring up the hill to slam into my house, tossing debris into the walls and rattling the windows, tugging at the eaves. I can drop off to sleep if it's a steady wind, even a gale-force one, but the slamming gusts are less restful. And this morning I woke to the machine-gun rattle of hard-driven rain pinging like hailstones against my windows. But it was warm, and the sky was dramatic with scudding rain clouds on the way to work. Everything has its compensations.

Besides, it's not by any means the worst wind we've had up here. One year, in February or March, it was so windy that it tore the roofs off of several buildings and froze pipes (even though it wasn't that cold in terms of ambient temps, the wind chill was vicious.) I had to plug my truck in, even though the ambient temp was over 30 degrees, because the wind was freezing the oil in the crank case. One of my clients, a long-haul trucker, had his semi blown over flat on its side (luckily he wasn't hurt.) Another truck - a tandem rig - got blown over, right off the highway, in the front yard of the clinic. The phone lines at the clinic failed; we could hear them ringing, but one my one the lines went out and we couldn't answer them. They just rang and rang, and we couldn't hear anyone, nor could they hear us. It was as if they somehow fused together; it took them two days to repair.

It was pretty dramatic. The entire town was talking about it for weeks. A little later in the spring, though, after the temperatures had gone soft and balmy, it had faded from people's minds - or so I thought. One day in early May my neighbors were having the Second Annual Rainbow Lake Regatta party. The regatta is sort of silly rafts toodling around the lake with various means of propulsion; the party is lots of food and alcohol, and that year there was music and a big fire. (The previous year it was warm, so no fire. Still lots of alcohol.) There were 3 kinds of wine and two kinds of whiskey, not to mention moose bratwurst and smoked salmon, amongst other goodies. It was actually a hilarious party... I can't remember much of the funny stuff specifically (though I laughed a lot) but I do remember this one story, which was when I realized that the legacy of that windstorm was not quite over.

At the time of the storm, it was still somewhat dark in the early morning, and after all that wind, very dry. One of our compatriots at the party, Richard (a trim, pleasant-featured, middle-aged man, with a certain kind of craggy and yet kindly good looks), was driving to work in that bitterly cold wind. After all the cold and dry, he was evidently feeling pretty chapped... not just his lips, but his whole face, as he'd been out in the wind a bit too much. He scrabbled one-handed around in his truck and came up with a chap stick, which he applied to his lips - not just the usual places, though, since his skin was also chapped. I've done this, and maybe you have too; if I've had a bad cold or something, say, and my entire upper lip has chapped: You apply the Carmex for about an inch around your actual mouth. Kinda attracts lint and hair, but oh so soothing. Richard thought as much, anyway, treating his chapped face with the lip balm. Mmmmm. Much better.

Anyway, he gets in to town and stops at the bank to make a deposit. Everyone is grinning and cheerful - maybe happy the worst of the wind is past, even if it is still blowing? Maybe just a nice friendly town? - at any rate, they all give him big smiles and he smiles back. The more he smiles the more they smile, and the more they smile, the more cheerful he's feeling. He's opening doors for other bank patrons, he's waving people into traffic in front of him, he's yielding right-of-way. Pretty soon he's having a great day, smiling and nodding at other motorists (all of whom give him a return grin), whistling his way to work at the school, generally enjoying himself.

Our Richard works in one of the portable units at one of the schools (a building off to the side, detached from the main school), so he goes into his office there and is doing some paperwork before he had to meet with school administrators and supervisors. He's on his way out the door to go to the main building when he just happens to catch sight of himself in a small mirror that hangs near the door. What the...?

See, now here is the hazard of driving to work in the dark. Things are not always what they seem. In his one-handed grubbing about for a chap stick, he is naturally not going to be looking away from the road for too long, and color is muted in the dark so apparently he didn't notice anything amiss as he applied, not chap stick, but his wife's fire-engine-red lipstick, to his lips. And all over his face. In a biiiiig raggedy clown mouth. Pretty much from nose to chin. (Evidently he was pretty generous with his application.) So here he is all happy and cheerful about all the friendly smiling Townies out after the Big Blow, all thrilled to be out and about again, all giving him grins and waves. But in fact, they're not glad to be out, they're not in a humanitarian mood, they're not relieved about the end of the windstorm, they're not even just being friendly. They're all in a smiling happy mood because they're amazed and bemused by his lipstick-laden face. And evidently too startled to ask him WHAT on earth he's doing covered in Cover Girl.

Not sure what kind of a riot he would've started had he gone in to the main building like that, but it's entertaining to think about.

He retired shortly thereafter.

I'm sure it was a coincidence.